Preliminary Findings on Sauce Packet Accumulation
Once sauce packet accumulation prevents one awkward moment, it must remain in force for the rest of the routine.
Preliminary Findings on Sauce Packet Accumulation Correspondence, May 2, 2021
Dear Sauce Packet Drawer,
This letter documents the current state of your operations for the period April 2020 through the date of this correspondence. You have been in active service for thirteen months.
Performance Record
You contain forty-one packets. Schezwan sauce, sweet chili, mint chutney, ketchup in two formats, and one packet of something identified on arrival as garlic aioli that has not been used and will not be used but cannot be discarded because it came with a specific meal that cost enough to justify keeping the extras.
You have prevented four instances of insufficient condiment. Evidence of one successful workaround is sufficient to govern all future cases.
The Problem With Success
The delivery saves a trip. The order then creates its own administrative layer: knowing which packets are within shelf life, knowing which cuisine the schezwan belongs with, and knowing, without checking, approximately how many remain. This knowledge is not written anywhere. It lives in the person who orders most often and expresses itself at the moment a meal is plated.
Someone repeats sauce packet accumulation to avoid one uncertain moment. The uncertain moment has not occurred since approximately October. The accumulation continues regardless.
Structural Contradiction
The service is supposed to remove meal work. The packet drawer is evidence that it redistributed the meal work rather than eliminating it. The work that moved is the work of deciding what belongs at the meal before the meal arrives, which is now handled in advance by a drawer organized according to a logic nobody has formally stated.
A second person copies the behavior because the repetition looks like experience. In this household that second person is the one who orders when the primary orderer is unavailable. They open the drawer with confidence. They do not know the aioli is from October.
Finding
No revision recommended. The drawer performs its function. Its function is not condiment storage. Its function is the appearance of preparedness during a period when preparedness was the primary available form of control.
Respectfully, The Delivery App Habit Record